Facebook's daily active users witnesses drop to 1.92 Bn; First time in 18 years of history

For the very first time in its18 years of existence, the total number of Daily Active Users (DAUs) in Facebook has witnessed a plunge. The parent company of Facebook, the Meta Networks, has revealed that the DAUs have declined to 1.929 billion in the three months to the end of December, down from 1.930 billion in the previous quarter, BBC reported. 

Further, the company cautioned that the revenue growth might decelerate owing to the increased competition from firms such as TikTok and YouTube, as well as with the advertisers pulling back on spending. According to BBC, in New York's after-hours trading, Meta's shares had dropped by over 20%. The dip in the share price of Meta removed approximately $200 billion from the company's stoke market valuation.

FB's sales growth hampered after users switched to competitors: Zuckerberg

The Chief Executive of Social media giant, Mark Zuckerberg has also highlighted the fact that the company's sales growth has been hampered since audiences, particularly younger FB users, have switched to competitors. Apart from Facebook, in prolonged trading, shares of other competing social media platforms such as Twitter, Snap, as well as Pinterest also dropped dramatically. 

In addition to this, Meta, which operates the world's second-largest digital advertising network behind Google, claimed it was also impacted by Apple's operating system's privacy modifications. As per Meta's chief financial officer Dave Wehner, the modifications have made it more difficult for marketers to target and assess their advertising on Facebook and Instagram, which could cost them "in the order of $10 billion" this year. 

Currently, Meta's overall revenue, which primarily comes from advertising revenues, surged to $33.67 billion, slightly exceeding market expectations, BBC reported.

Even though the social media giant has made its own investments in video making to take on TikTok, which is controlled by Chinese internet giant ByteDance, the firm has generated less money from this product than it does from its standard Facebook and Instagram feeds. 

According to the CEO, "The teams are executing quite well and the product is growing very quickly. The thing that is somewhat unique here is that TikTok is so big a competitor already and also continues to grow at quite a fast rate," BBC reported.  

Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg has recently cautioned users that in Messenger, people will soon be able to know whether someone is taking screenshots of their chats. In a blog post, Zuckerberg urged users not to capture screengrabs when Disappearing Messages are activated, after revealing that all Messenger conversations can be encrypted, similar to WhatsApp.  

(Image: AP/ Pixabay)